Why do Protestants believe in the Bible (not a troll)

[Bereta_Eder]

But Ataturk also led to the creation of the "Neo-Turk" identity. Not good news for anyone who didn't consider himself a Turk within Turkey. The Armenian genocide is only the most striking example.

[Heresson]

I read on one Armenian page a quotation of Atatuerk who condemned Tanzimat for the thing; it's not quite HIS fault.
I believe it was one of the greatest modernisers and one of the most successfull politicians of all the modern times.

[Elok]

Originally posted by TCO
And you are a Schismatic. You broke off.

If the Orthodox church is schismatic, England rebelled against America. We were superior in numbers and landmass at the time of the break in 1054, as well as having the support of the majority of bishops. We also still resemble the ancient Church in both outlook and worship, which makes us the big brother here. So no dice.

[Evil Knevil]

Originally posted by paiktis22
That's right, protestant America.

Christianity was founded and born here where it remains unaltered. You just took the wrong turn somewhere and next thing you know you think little boys are very cute. Read the scriptures my son and translate them correctly this time. I shall pray for your salvation as every good Christian should do.

I also see your position allows you to be very objective about who you baptise your enemies

It's from the Father AND the Son you schismatic bastard.

[Straybow]

I hate to drag this thread back on topic after this entertaining interlude…

The general agreement is that John's Gospel was written last, probably around 90 ad. In 90 ad, Christ would have been 96 years old, so John was, what, maybe in his late 80s? And the structure of John's gospel is generally agreed to reflect Greek modes of rhetorical expression ("In the beginning was the word..."), not Aramaic/Judaic modes. So we are to believe that John lived well into his 80s, then recorded his memories in the rhetorical form of a language not his own. Sure, it could have happened; but if you were weilding Occam's Razor, it this what the shave would look like?

Curious, Jon M, since the gospel of John is typically given the latest creation date. In fact the beginning chapter of John is a rewriting of the creation story that attempts to be an answer to the gnostic interpretation. Clearly this part, at least, was an add on.

"In fact" that interpretation is the product of modernist textual critics. The Essene texts found in Qumran show a native (anti-Hellenistic) Jewish root to similar form and symbolism that predated Greek Gnosticism by 2 centuries or more.

Occam's razor is the major problem for proponents of late authorship. The majority of Christians and all but one NT writer were Jewish. The Judean revolt and destruction of the Temple were epochal events that permenantly changed Jewish culture. None of the NT documents make any direct reference to the historical fall of Jerusalem. Not even a "see I told ya so" added to the end.

It would be like three Japanese generals and a Japanese historian writing memoirs of WWII, another Japanese historian writing two dozen treatises on technical and tactical innovations of the war, and one of the generals writing an epilogue on the ramifications of the war and nobody mentioning the use of the A-bombs on Japan. I know nth generation Irish Americans who look upon the reconquest of William of Orange as though it were yesterday. I suppose a hardened cynic might claim the forgers were so clever as to think of that as a validation in the eyes of people reviewing texts from centuries in the future.
Yeah, sure.

As for the Q hypothesis, I'm sure it tickles the fancy of many an intellectual. Unfortunately textual criticism has failed where tried under far more controlled circumstances (see various debates about Shakespeare and Fletcher's collaborative play).

What I find more curious is why the news discoveries haven't lead to a sea-change in Protestantism.

Because they aren't discoveries in any real sense, since almost all were known to the ancients and rejected from the canon. They add nothing germaine to understanding the person and works of Christ. Not even the wackiest revisionists claim that G of Thomas is the work of another eyewitness, rather the advocates lower the canonical Gs to the level of the G of T as later works by non-eyewitnesses.

The G of James is the only real discovery of a genuine ancient Christian document that appears to be little known to the ancient church at large. A few people have even claimed to experience miraculous healings while reading the physical manuscript. But the notion that an inspired document worthy of canon would be neglected by the early church to the extent that it became lost is antithetical to the concept of inspiration of the scriptures.

Edit: quote tags

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
But the simplest Answer isn´t usualy the correct one.

People believed that Stars are fixed on some kind of hollow Sphere which revolves around earth…

Schiaparelli believed… [Martians] invented a complex System of Canali…

Earlier Biologists believed…

Koprnikus believed…

All are examples not of simple answers to simple questions (such as who wrote the canonical Gospels). These were presumptive imaginings based on a lack of knowledge rather than a straightforward conclusions based on actual data.

The Gospels were attributed orally long before somebody decided to give them formal titles that were written on the mss. We know this in part because there never was any debate about who wrote them, unlike other documents such as the Revelation of Peter and Gospel of Thomas that were treated skeptically by some early writers.

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
We now have millions of modern copies of the Bible. As you look further back in time, the number of copies dwindles, eventually reaching zero. The oldest actual Bible that we have dates from several centuries after the events it describes.

The fact that, at some point, X copies existed (choose any value of X you like) signifies nothing. It's not as if we have thousands of independent eyewitness accounts, nor do we have thousands of copies dating from the first few centuries. So what's the point of mentioning how many copies of the four canonical gospels existed several centuries later?

Red herrings, Jack. The millions of printed copies are strictly derivative of the ancient mss. You should know better than to bring up such irrelevancies, unless your point is to decieve the weak.

The hundreds of copies that we have from the third-fourth centuries and the thousands that remain from the post-Roman period are surviving copies from a much greater number. Each copy had to be laboriously made by hand and transported by hand to another location if it were deemed important enough to be spread abroad. The labor involved in accurate copying and transportation constiture a barrier against tampering.

It works. We have few examples of ancient sources that deliberately corrupted their copies (Origen is the only one I know off the top of my head) and many examples of apparent accidental errors. In most cases those who wished to spread their own ideas created new documents and presented them as of some higher or earlier source (numerous gospels and epistles).

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Straybow

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
But the simplest Answer isn´t usualy the correct one.

People believed that Stars are fixed on some kind of hollow Sphere which revolves around earth…

Schiaparelli believed… [Martians] invented a complex System of Canali…

Earlier Biologists believed…

Koprnikus believed…

All are examples not of simple answers to simple questions (such as who wrote the canonical Gospels). These were presumptive imaginings based on a lack of knowledge rather than a straightforward conclusions based on actual data.

Nope, I´ve got to Disagree.
They were Conclusions which were made based upon the Knowledge that was available in those ancient times.

That we now are able to disprove those early Assumptions has only been made possible by advancing knowledge.
But people in earlier times believed that those things (which we now know are incorrect) to be the truth, based upon the knowledge they had.

Same holds true about the Gospels.
According to the knowledge you have to date,
you attribute those Gospels to be the real works of People like Mathäus, Markus, Lukas and Johannes. You are as sure abut it as Schiaparelli was about the Canali to be built by Martians.
But maybe at one tme in Future Scientists can disprove the Assumption that the Gospels are really works of People who have known Jesus personally (op maybe they even are able to do it nowadays), just as Schipapareli Assumption of the Canali to be works of Martians was disproven.

From a standpoint of the future even the people today have a lack of knowledge, because we (people of tody) don´t have the (more advanced) knowledge those people in the future have.
Assuming that there won´t be dark ages like the medieval tzimes again, where knowledge is lost and/or no new knoweledge is gained, this holds true everytime.

[Straybow]

The "Knowledge" that existed in ancient times was mythical rather than factual. Nobody had actually seen any crystal sphere of the heavens, etc.

In fact that is what separates the Genesis creation story from other ancient stories. No anthropic tools (like Marduk's potter's wheel) or constructs (crystal sphere of heaven or columns upon elephants upon turtle) are inserted to "explain" things.

IIRC, one astronomer (I thought it was Schiaparelli) wrote about "canali" which means "channels" (which could be of natural origin) but others interpreted the word to mean artificial canals and imagined the anthropic Martian canal-builder civilization around the misinterpretation. Not his fault.

Copernicus didn't have mathematical training to model ellipses. His aim was to create an accurate calendar of celestial events (new moons, planetary conjuctions, etc) and the simple circular heliocentric model gave him that much. He never insisted that the orbits were in fact perfect circles or any such imposition of ideal over the physical reality. What others did isn't his fault either.

[Proteus_MST]

Copernicus e facto assumed in his work De Revolutionibus Orbium that the Orbits of the Planets were real Circles.
But, as those perfect circles didn´t fit into the things he obsrved, he (ust as people, who had an geocentric view of the world) had to introduce epicircles into his model of the solar System.
He also had to put the Sun somewhat epicentric into the Solar System.

By doing this did the same thing even todays Scientists do, if they encounter something they didn´t take into consideration while formulating a theory, i.e. they try to isolate these interference Factors and somehow try to incorporate them into their Model of reality, to make their Theorie fit to their Observations.

As for the Canali you are right, it was de facto Percival Lowell, who, after own Observations of Mars, believed that these Canali are real Canals for Irrigation made by intelligent Martians.

As for the knowldge of past being mythical rather than factual, it depends how far into the past you go.
Lowell based his knowledge on his own Observations of Mars (not just on Schiapareli calling them Canali) and Copernicus also tried to describe reality (i.e. the Orbits of the Planets) by his mathematical Model, and just made the mistake of introducing Epicycles into his Model of reality, instead of trying to find another Model (Elipses) which fit better to reality.

So I´d cal the Theoris of Lowell and Copernicus more than just mythical nowledge, but scientific theories, which just were wrong (and were corrected by later scientists)

Even todays knowledge is just an Interpretation of some Values which can be read out by measuring Devices.
he models whixch are created by Scientists based upon these measured values sometimes fit well into te Observations made in reality, but sometimes they don´t fit so well and have to be revised (or anothr theory comes up which describes the Readout made by those Measuring Devices and even is able to cnect these Values to other Values made by other measuring Devices and so the old Theory is abandoned and te new theory is adapted.

To get an example of the recent Science:
Long years Biologists believed, that the Neanderthals and humans mixed and so the modern humans were partially Neanderthals on a genetical Level.
It was only ogic, as Neanderthals and Humans were asumed to be able to produce fertile Offsprings and even lived some time together in the same regions.
Because of modern genetical Examinations we now know, that the Assumption isn´t true and the Homo neanertalensis doesn´t live on in our Genes.

Before we were able to disprove the Theory using more modern Equipment it was corect to assme, that Humans and Neanderthals mixed and so the Scientist who made this Theory isn´t to blame, because he mae he Theory based upon the Facts he had at hand.
He just shouldn´t go on and stil claim that his Theory is true, because we now have other Facts gained by more modern Equipment, which say that, although his Theory sonded logical and rsonable, it isn´t true.

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Elok


If the Orthodox church is schismatic, England rebelled against America. We were superior in numbers and landmass at the time of the break in 1054, as well as having the support of the majority of bishops. We also still resemble the ancient Church in both outlook and worship, which makes us the big brother here. So no dice.

landmass?
Anatoly, Balkans, Georgia and Ruthenia against the rest of Europe; remember that Christians under Muslims weren't in the same church as You. Orthodox patrarchates still existed,, but in a way OP in C-ple exists today
But yes, it was the eastern church which kept the original language of the church, more ancient theology and stuff

[Straybow]

Yes, the use of epicycles to correct for non-circularity was the standard mathematical practice before Kepler introduced elliptical algebra into astronomy.

That use of epicycles goes against your point. You said that the simple answers were not usually correct, however you have just shown that Copernicus could only get an accurate answer by introducing complications so that it was no longer a simple circular model.

The simple answer to the question of canonical authorship is that the traditional attributions upheld by near contemporaries are generally accurate. All the textual critics have shown are circumstatial linguistics that make the issue less than 100% clear.

Since the Apostles all spoke Greek as a second (or third) language we should not be surprised if parts of the Matthew and Mark appear to be translated from Aramaic. Aramaic was their primary (or secondary) language and perhaps the language used by Christ at times. Luke was a native speaker of Greek and no doubt had to translate some of the eyewitness accounts he compiled from Aramaic. No singular Aramaic Gospel manuscript predating the existing Gospels is necessary to explain the linguistic elements in them.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by The diplomat
Now the reason Protestants accept the 4 Gospels but not the other "gospels", is because we trust the conclusion of the early Church Fathers when they determined that only the 4 Gospels, Mark, Luke, John and Matthew were authentic and real.

Those "Church Fathers" being catholic bishops meeting at the conference of Nicene

I have pointed this out many many times before.

Of course let's not forget that Peter was the first Pope and along with Saint Paul founded the catholic church

In the end, divisions amongst Christians are just silly.

[Heresson]

I agree. You should all come back to the Holy Apostolic Church of Rome.

[Elok]

Peter was bishop of Antioch a long time before he was bishop of Rome. And the only "Catholic Bishops" at Nicea were the ones from the Roman church. The rest were Christian. Booya.

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Elok
Peter was bishop of Antioch a long time before he was bishop of Rome.

Yes, and I wondered many times about it...
In fact, some doubt He was ever a bishop of Rome.

And the only "Catholic Bishops" at Nicea were the ones from the Roman church. The rest were Christian. Booya.

Not funny.
And not true; at this time, all were catholic... And all were orthodox